High molecular weight polymers such as those having molecular weights in the range of about 500 to about 10,000 of the type prepared by reacting alkylene oxides with an initiator are variously referred to as adducts, polyols, polyglycols, etc. These materials are widely employed in commerce as lubricants, emulsifiers, plasticizers, solvents, and raw materials for the manufacture of polyurethane foam.
Such polymers are frequently manufactured in comparatively large facilities, such as kettle facilities having an annual capacity of as much as one hundred million pounds per year of polymer, or more. When a purification sequence of the type disclosed in Speranza et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,000,963 is used as part of the manufacturing process, a small amount of the high molecular weight polymer will be occluded in the solids that are trapped by the filter during the filtration step that is part of the process. This filter cake must be removed from time to time and is normally considered to be a waste product and a loss to the process. Moreover, it frequently represents a cost item in that the filter cake must be disposed of in an environmentally acceptable manner.
Although the amount of alkylene oxide polymer that is occluded in the filter cake is compartively small, in the order of about one percent or so of the total volume of the polymer manufactured, nevertheless, when one considers a plant having a capacity of one hundred million pounds per year, this represents a loss of one million pounds of potential product which must be disposed of not through sale and use, but rather, by burning or other techniques which are environmentally acceptable for the disposal of waste products from chemical plants.